Westerners are expressing ‘shock, shock’ that every country coming out of the Arab Spring is vowing to be governed by the Sharia laws that made Afghanistan such a pariah nation under the Taliban.
Specifically, they are spooked by the fact that just this week the Tunisians elected an Islamist Party to replace the (Western-supported) dictator they ousted from power; that the Egyptians seem poised to do the same; and that even the Libyans – who, but for NATO, would still be living under Gaddafi’s iron-fisted rule – are espousing governing values that have more in common with Iran than the United States.
But I warned it might be thus:
With all due respect to the democratic protesters, the issue is not whether Mubarak will go, for he will. (The man is 82 and already looks half dead for Christ’s sake!) Rather, the issue is who will replace him. And it appears they have not given any thought whatsoever to this very critical question…
[For] the devil the Egyptians know might prove far preferable to the devil they don’t (which might turn out to be the extremists of the Pan-Arab Muslim Brotherhood who believe that all Muslim states should be governed based on strict adherence to the Qur’an). Just ask the Iranians who got rid of the Mubarak-like Shah in 1979 only to end up with the Ayatollah—whose Islamic revolution they’ve regretted (and have longed to overturn) ever since….
(Army pledges no force against protesters, The iPINIONS Journal, February 1, 2011)
The devil for Westerners of course is that, despite their best efforts to transpose their democratic values (even at the cost of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars), these newly liberated countries are not only shunning those values, but currying favor with countries like Iran and Pakistan that are open and notorious enablers of terrorist attacks against Western countries.
I could end here with a wholly warranted – I told you so, but there’s also this writing on the wall I offered almost six years ago:
I’m not sure who was more shocked by the outcome of Wednesday’s Palestinian elections: the victorious Hamas Islamic group (branded a terrorist organization by governments around the world) and their ‘wipe-Israel-off-the-map’ Islamic sympathizers – led by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; or the defeated Fatah Party and their ‘you’re-either–with-us-or-against-us’ democracy crusaders – led by U.S. President George W. Bush…
Frankly, the only appropriate reaction to these elections is to embrace them as a profound lesson in democracy. Of course, I appreciate that by refusing to renounce its commitment to the destruction of Israel, Hamas leaders make it prohibitive for most democratic governments to deal with them. But it’s for the Palestinian people to decide whether their interests are best served by a government thusly condemned and isolated.
(Hamas ‘terrorists’ win legitimate state power, The iPINIONS Journal, January 27, 2006)
Enough said?
Related commentaries:
Army pledges no force…
Hamas ‘terrorists’ win…